


Hearts like cities

by Liffis



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Falling In Love, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Russian focus, no Putin was considered in the making of this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-05-27 00:48:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15013073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liffis/pseuds/Liffis
Summary: Above and beyond all, they are the sons of their home, and their homes are always what shaped their hearts into being. Aleksandr's is quite like Moskwa: bright and flashy, on the outside, yet hiding a million truths underneath, if one was patient enough to dig as deep. Nicklas' is not like Gävle: his heart is too big to ever be satisfied, always looking to grow, always keeping this spot that is hungry to go beyond.Or: their homes shaped them, made them - but along the way, they grew into their own person. And so they grew close.





	1. Moskwa

**Author's Note:**

> Looks like the hockey fandom finally caught up with me - this is actually the first fic I've written here, but I've been low-key lurking around the Caps and, yeah. 
> 
> As my experience and knowledge re: hockey lingo is very limited, I tried to keep it as vague as possible. Which should fit, seeing as this fic focuses on other aspects. Mainly Ovi. Which, something else: you will notice that some names/etc. are transcribed differently. In fandom, I have, so far, only encountered a very americanized spelling of Russian names. That is not the spelling I am familiar with, nor is it how I'd transcribe the Cyrillic lettering into Latin lettering myself. So, be prepared to see different spellings and stuff.
> 
> Actually I'm really curious how this fic will be taken, because I'm not sure if it's typical to other fics/characterizations. So. Uhm. Yeah. Have fun!
> 
> А если говоришь по-русски - писай, пожалуйста, я учиюся )))

They give him a list of videos, all with potential prospects, all players they’d get in a heartbeat, all players who they consider to „fit their system“. Alex nods and promises to watch them all, mentally preparing him for boring afternoons. The finery of finding an exact perfect matching player is lost on him: he is better at reading plays and players, finding the cracks and seams and forcing them wide open. Reading single players and not a team’s whole system? Difficult. But he tries to console him: all of these players are supposed to play alongside him, so whoever he decides on, it will have to be someone he can imagine right next to him. 

*

_He realizes sometime around puberty – he could’ve known before, probably, and when it all comes out to his mother, years later, she just nods as if not surprised. So, some part of it might’ve been obvious, even to him, because when he touches Dmitrij – just a bet, just a joke, both of them expecting the other to chicken out except neither does -, the touch goes not just to his dick. It also settles in his belly, deep and low: this feels right. Like this is it, for him, a part of him he hadn’t known, but now it’s there and it suits him._

_He’s just a teenager._

_He has a pretty good idea what this will mean for him and his life._

*

The videos blur into a continuous stream of good hockey players. Each and every player is excellent and he does see why they were chosen, just as he can see how exhilarating it must be to even so much as play against them, let alone play with them. 

But he can’t really see any of them next to him. 

Of course, any of them would fit – they’re all professionals. It would work. But it’s not what he was told, from all sides. 

Hell, he’d even asked the translator, in quiet and muffled Russian, if he understood correctly. Sometimes, he didn’t catch all nuances, he wasn’t one to lie to himself. His English was passable, and it got him around in everyday life; and for important issues, he had a translator at his side, anyways. 

So when he was called for a meeting, and literally everyone important was present, and his favourite and most trusted translator sat in a chair close-by, too, he knew. This transfer wasn’t just any transfer. 

They didn’t just want a good transfer. They didn’t just want a hidden, raw gem to bring to shine in Washington.

They basically wanted someone for Alex.

As if he’s someone to be placated, as if he needs a toy. 

He doesn’t, he just wants to play hockey, but if they want to spend money and attention on him, who is he to make them stop? It’s not like he knows the words, anyways, and he isn’t sure the points would come across well…especially seeing as the Americans tend to be insulted over the weirdest issues. 

So he takes it into stride and decides to accept whatever it is.

*  
 _  
He knows Moskwa. Moskwa, his heart, his love, his home._

_Even before he knew who he was like, he’d been reading the city, its people. He’d probably been doing that ever since a child, because once he realizes, the details come to him easily. It’s surprisingly easy to recognize it: the men who are too tense and make too sure to not look at other men, never look at them, ever. The women who walk along the boulevards, chatting and wearing their finest fur-lined coats, walking so, so close. Men sitting, drinking tea, but holding the glass with only one hand, and their neighbour coincidentally mirroring them, except they don’t ever look at eachother. Women who have lipstick stains on the collar of their otherwise perfect clothes, only hastily hidden away by scarves and jewellery._

_Alex sees them, immediately, takes it in._

_Moscovians are easy to read, for him. He sees the glitz and glam and shine and colourful splashes and noises and money and of everything and all too much – he sees it and sees what’s under it._

_Moskwa is rich enough in everything, so of course it is rich in this, too. Even for people like him who are otherwise caught in the flashbulbs of fame._

_Partying looks the same in all clubs, and he is growing a good feeling for which clubs are okay to stay at. Clubs that are famous enough he won’t stand out yet not famous enough for anyone to get sloppy. That drew too much attention of the wrong kind, and that wouldn’t do._

*

At the second day, he’s bored by it. The players are long since blurred together, so he’ll have to see it a second time, just to make sure he didn’t miss anything or anyone important. 

Except –

Except there’s this player – who stands out.

At first he thinks it’s a glitch in the video, so he sits up and rewinds the video of the player, checking his video player, but there’s no issue.

So he starts again, clicks play, and – stares. At the player. These passes, like scalpels, cutting through defences like he wills the openings to exist, just because he wants it to. And the puck lands exactly where it’s supposed to be, like the guy looked into the future and acted on it. And again. A third time. The guy is fast and nimble and exactly where he needs to be and his shots and assists are as if he slices the game open – no, as if he’s orchestrating the game, as if it’s merely there to amuse him. 

Alex curses, sits up, and re-watches the video.

He feels electric, skin buzzing with it.

Even on another re-watch, the guy is breathtaking. Those assists are so good, Alex would absolutely cry tears of joy if he wasn’t so baffled by them. He’d never seen someone just – be. Like this. With these assists. 

He checks the number of the video, and the name on the list he’s been given, and then texts everyone important. Doesn’t matter there are still four videos left, he’s made his decision. Full stop. No watching of the other videos again necessary, he’s made his decision. 

_Nicklas Bäckström_ , the list says, and he rolls the name on his tongue.

*  
 _  
The call of his agent comes after an especially taxing training. Washington, he says, NHL._

_Alex drops down on the bench, relief slamming into him. This is it, the thing he’s been waiting for since he’s been old enough to score a puck into the net and have a trainer tell him to calm down, Sasha._

_He’s been dreaming of faster ice, faster players, more hockey, better hockey, greedy for more, always.  
And now, he’ll get it. _

*

He sees the guy’s face only days later, and only because he remembers to look him up. Until then, all he’d seen was playing, and assists, scores, some on-ice scuffling. Bäckström was on the smaller scale of hockey players, but acted like everyone was supposed to bow down on him.

And when he sees his face, out of hockey gear and just clad in some ordinary clothes – hoodie and sweat pants, Alex remembers -, it hits him in the gut.

It’s like Dmitrij, settling deep in his gut, like some part fit exactly right in his life – except this doesn’t. He’s never exchanged a single word with Bäckström, he doesn’t know anything about him. If anything, Bäckström might as well be an asshole.

But these assists. The curl of those lips whenever his assist led to a score. Those eyes, flashing in almost-cruelty whenever he checked someone.   
All of it wrapped in this guy, blonde locks curling on a sweaty, slightly blotched face, teeth grinding together as he answers the reporter monosyllably.

He looks so terrifyingly human, Alex can’t breathe. All of this excellent hockey, and it’s this guy. 

 

That night, Alex can’t fall asleep for hours on end.

*  
 _  
In Moskwa, he doesn’t fall in love. Or, at least not with men. His heart is eaten wholly by the city itself, and it pulses in the city’s tact, and no one ever comes close to this._

_That, and Alex is not stupid, he knows what is said, and he knows his behaviour was expected as a teenager, to find his way into his body. Expected, even, of young men._

_It stopped being acceptable after everyone started having sex with women, and by the time Alex is playing professionally and famously, it is not something he can do._

_Not out open, at least, but he knows his Moskwa. He knows the secret heartchambers of the city, out of public’s eye, and he is not alone there._

_But his heart, he guards carefully, for all he acts like he does the exact opposite. The public thinks him: open, easy with affection, heart on his tongue. They think they know him to the bones, every nook and cranny and secret, all bared to them._

_He lets them._

_It’s an excellent cover. Everyone expects him to be loud and flamboyant and too much. No one bothers to look below that, no one bothers to map out who he is below that – oh, some try, and they get closer and see more of him. But beyond that, no one ever bothers, and surely no one ever tries to go for his heart and the other soft parts of him. So he keeps them where they are and waits until someone does. He won’t settle for less. He won’t be loved less or only for parts of himself._

*

Bäckström is terrified and out of his depth just as much as Alex is.

Unlike Bäckström, however, he is already settled at a club – but he’s nervous because he wants to welcome Bäckström properly. Alex wants them to start of well immediately.

Except when he sees the Swede, wide eyes, jaws clenched so tight, the frozen fear is clear on his face. Alex wants him to feel welcome, to feel at home –

He desperately wants Bäckström to like Washington, to like this, to like him –

He wants it, he wants it so much, he’s wanted it ever since he’d seen that video for the second time and realized that he could have this hockey right alongside him, and he wants, wants it so badly, like a child, except so much more.

The nerves catch whatever he knows of English, making him stutter and stumble over the clunky, foreign words.

But then Bäckström is next to him, clutching the jersey, and Alex can almost feel him tremble.

Only when the cameras turn away, to more and better stories, does Bäckström relax, letting go of the jersey.

“Hello, I am Nicke”, he says, holding out his hand.

The smile on his lips is now honest, and it transforms Bäckström’s – no, Nicke’s – face completely.

“Sasha”, Alex stutters out, shaking Nicke’s hand, “Ovi. Alex. All fine.”

Nicke’s hand is wide and slightly clammy, but his grip is good. 

“Okay”, he says, “Okay”, and his lips curl into a different smile, something sharp. Like on the ice, when watching the opponent, figuring out their cracks and seams, just waiting for the perfect moment to let loose that shot –

Except this time, it’s all directed at _Alex_.

Alex feels like someone hooked something under his ribs and twisted – as if all his secrets could be bared, if Nicklas – Nicke, Kolja, he will have to come up with a name, something just for them – if Nicke just wanted it. If Nicke cared about it, he could, but he doesn’t, not now.

Alex wants him to care, he decides right then and there, when he follows Nicke through the masses, to get back – he wants Nicke to care. It’s not just Hockey. It’s more, something different, something else.


	2. Gävle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh wow, what a very warm welcome to the Hockey Fandom, thank you, everyone!!
> 
> This chapter is with/about Nicke, and. Well, it came out much longer than expected, for starters, and its style is quite different from Ovi's. Also, I do have to admit I like Ovi's more, because well, I have Feelings.
> 
> To everyone who commented: thank you for your comment, you absolutely brightened my day!!!

“We’ll do it together, Nicke”, Ovi promises, before the match, just like he’s always doing, just like he’s doing the last eleven years, even when being worn down and sad. This time, he’d always promise, this time it will count.

Back then, when they’d been – well, half kids, it seems to Nicke now, back then they’d been gangly and naïve and not quite sure of their place on this earth. Back then, he’d believed Ovi, just like Ovi had believed in him, and that – that had meant something, had made him want to be better, to be the person Ovi saw in him.

*

_Gävle is nothing but a stretch of city, a cluster of a few houses, under wide, spanning skies. In summer, it is the epitome of Sweden: houses that appear tiny, cozy, in a wild landscape, surrounded by forests and streams, and the skies above were blue, so blue and eternal._

_Sometimes, right when the summer break is drawing close and Nicky is shaking with excitement for school to pick up again, for regular hockey training with all of his friends, around that time, he is sick of Gävle. He does not tell his family this._

_But Gävle, while his home, is suffocating in its – nothingness. It is so flat and stretched out like a pancake, like the last pancake that always came out too thin and too lumpy. A smatter of city, smeared carelessly in the Swedish wilderness._

_He’s a child and the world seems to live somewhere else. It always lives somewhere else, never here. The only great thing about Gävle, the only thing that is truly and utterly exciting for him – well. Ice hockey, of course._

*

They stumble off the ice, together, Ovi’s arm heavy around his shoulder, and Ovi – is pressed too hard into his side, despite having more than enough room to go somewhere else. Go to someone else, talk to them, but he stays, next to Nicke. Always next to Nicke.

“We do it, Kolja”, Ovi says, quietly, voice barely above a rumble, “We do it”

It’s a promise, especially with the way Ovi’s eyes glitter: sharp and dangerous and hopeful. Their wins are piling up, piling up so much Nicke wants to curse them, wants to curse himself and his colleagues: nothing will be worse than to drop out, again, after this. Having hope crushed is worse than just dragging by, and he doesn’t want to hope. He never wants that glint to drop from Ovi’s eyes, ever, but he has seen it get snuffed out like a candle. Hockey didn’t care about Ovi’s happiness, but Nicke did.

“We will”, he just says back, it’s all he wants to say to Ovi, here, when everyone else can listen in. 

The locker room is not made for – for some things to be said in, not from him to Ovi. Some things need to be said elsewhere. 

Sometimes he fervently wishes Ovi spoke Swedish, too, because he’s not sure he can explain some things in clumsy English.

*

_It doesn’t matter how far he goes, how much he wins, how many people tell him he’s good, as if they’re surprised – none of this matters. It is not enough. None of it fills this horrible, clanging part of him, somewhere under his ribs, hidden away. None of it makes him feel satisfied._

_Oh, happy, he is. Quite often, actually, there are a lot of things that make him happy. But few things actually make him feel satisfied._

_He hates it._

_He wants nothing more than just to lie in bed, or have any other calm moment, and just be. Just exist, for a moment, and not feel something gnawing at his heart._

_He’s too young to name it as anything, but the closest word that would fit, would be ‘longing’._

*

Once they’re home, Ovi kisses him. A slow kiss, calm. Nothing like he’d ever expect Ovi to kiss like, but here he is.

“This year we do it, I sure”, he says.

Except this time, he says it differently from how he said it at the locker room. There’s no manic grin on his lips, no flashy gaudiness he is so easy to slip into, as if it is a role he can slip into like a shirt. This is not The Captain on his way to lead the team.

It's just Ovi. Alex. The one only Nicke sees, and maybe a few others, although Nicke is the one who sees him like this the most often.

Like this, Alex is calm, secure. 

Like a king, Nicke thinks.

He kisses him back, and his heart jolts, but that’s ok. Alex is there.

*

_He hears of the transfer plans from his agent, and for a second he worries it might have been a practical but mean joke. But when he asks for clarification, the words stay the same. Washington. They want him._

_That day, he looks them up and – that name, he remembers. Aleksandr Ovechkin. The Russian._

_His agent tells him a lot of things, that day._

_Washington wants him for Ovechkin, she says. To support Ovechkin._

_Nicky watches videos of Ovechkin, to refresh his memories, and wonders: how is he supposed to support someone like that? There is no way he can, not him. Ovechkin skates like the ice is his and everyone else is merely there because their presence entertains him. Like the ice is his kingdom, his territory._

_Nicky can’t really assist anyone like that, his way of skating is much different, he’s – not like this, not this massive, bulldozing force screaming for attention. His place is in the back._

_It will work out, his mother tells him, when he speaks of his worry, and then she keeps reading her newspaper._

_Only when she’s done with that, folding up the newspaper and rustling the paper, she says one thing, just that._

_Someone being the centre of attention also means that others will not be the focus of attention._

_It is such a simple, terribly obvious thing to tell him, except. Except he sits, suddenly dumbstruck by it, by what it means._

_She just smiles, combs through his hair, and says no more._

_Nicky had never grown his perceptiveness and ability to dig in, see the underlying truth, from scratch. It had always come from somewhere and someone._

_Flashiness will never be his forte, unless it is flashiness in setting up goals: in that, he allows himself it. Otherwise, attention is nothing he likes and everything he despises in ice hockey. But until that very moment, he hadn’t thought of what flashiness could offer him._

_What Ovechkin could offer him. What it could mean, for him, playing alongside a player like that, someone who dominated the ice and the life, demanding attention from everyone._

*

“This year we do it”, Ovi promises, every year, like he can force it to be so by sheer bull-headed stubbornness. Nicke would laugh, except he fully believes Alex to be able to it, if he wanted.

This year, it is not an empty promise. The further they go, the heavier Alex’ words sound, like a safe weight. And they slowly start to believe him, believe it with their whole hearts, not just some sparks of idealism: the further they go, the more they think of it.

No one truly admits it in front of the camera, but sure, in the locker room, they sometimes whisper of it. What if. 

Neither Nicke nor Ovi shut it down, but neither do they participate. The two of them try to keep the team on track and focused.

Only when it’s just them, lying in Alex’ too large bed, does Alex start shaking with nerves. Only then does Alex clutch him, shoulders locked in tension.

“What if we lose?”, he asks, quietly against Nicke’s shoulder, “What if we fail?”

And it sounds as if he instead means: _What if **I** lose? What if **I** fail?_

So Nicke returns the hug, just as fiercely, his own body pressing against Alex, hard and unforgiving and unable to ignore: Alex can be afraid of this slowly-coming-true dream to slip out of his fingers like mist, but never ever can Alex be able to be afraid of Nicke slipping through his fingers.  
Nicke is too solid and too real to disappear, and Alex can feel him against his body, and Nicke is not going anywhere. 

He holds Alex until the shaking slowly stops, and then some, for good measure. Only when Alex huffs a breath against Nicke’s bare throat, in this one way, does Nicke talk.

“I will set you up with a perfect assist, so you cannot not score. Then Kuzy score and we win.”

The noise coming from Alex could be an aborted laugh, or a snort, or something else, Nicke’s not sure.

“Kolja, I not want to lose.”

*

_He sees Ovechkin for the first time, and – it doesn’t feel like a slam, or anything else forceful, really. The podium doesn’t feel like anything at all beyond a nauseating whirl of people and faces and cameras, so many of them. The attention is horrible, and even Ovechkin pales in comparison to that._

_But when he sees Ovechkin alone, before the first training – they’re the first to arrive, and probably Ovechkin was early for the same reason he was: some early skating. And the way Ovechkin lazily runs laps around the ice, throwing in a twirl or two, with that wide, beaming smile –_

_That hollow spot behind Nicky’s ribs thuds and hurts._

_He laces up his skates and follows Ovechkin._

_It barely takes them any time to click. By the time the first training is officially over, Nicky feels as if Ovechkin, Alex, Ovi – Call me Sasha! – is written in a language he can read even easier than Swedish. As if he himself is written in a language Ovi speaks better than Russian. Like the ice under their skates, it just works._

*

They go on, even with losses.

But they win, much more than they lose, so they go on.

And on.

Around them, other teams drop out, and Nicke is terrified that they will be the next, but they never are.

“This time, we win”, Ovi says, hands heavy on their shoulders on their way out to the ice.

“We win!”, he bellows, before matches, and more often than not, it is also true after the match.

*

_Their first kiss happens unexpected. At least for Nicke._

_Alex claims he was obvious, and looking back, Nicke has to agree: regular and frequent dinner dates, flowers, gifts. Alex cancelling on others, flirting just as frequently at discos but never ever going beyond that stage, always keeping a certain distance from friskier dancing. Alex putting his hand on Nicke’s thigh, putting his arm around Nicke’s shoulders, always sitting next to him, if possible._

_Nicke hadn’t seen the bigger picture behind it, which is something that does give him grief once Alex kisses him right on the lips, making it so terribly obviously visible._

_At hockey, he’s better at seeing things._

_But Alex’ eyes get soft, soft and warm like he has never looked at anything or anyone, ever, not that Nicke noticed, and he had been looking a lot –_

_Oh. Oh, he had been looking a lot. Indeed. And held Alex’ hand, made Russian dishes he found recipes online, went to discos, returned Alex’ touches, only let Alex touch him this often, and now that he thought of it, he did gravitate towards him –_

_“Kolja”, Alex says, like it’s a secret stolen from the depth of his heart._

_And like this, he is nothing like the Ovi that basks in the media attention with beaming smiles._

_Nicke looks at him, and sees all the contradictions, and he can only faintly guess at how much more must be there where he hasn’t looked, has maybe forbidden himself to look. But that’s okay, he is looking now._

_He kisses Alex back, slightly unsure, but intrigued. And trusting, in Alex. Always trusting in Alex._

*

It is done.

It is _done_ , they did it.

Dimly, he’s aware around him all hell is breaking loose, and he is aware he’s moving, but –

Ovi – no, Alex slams into him and his arms are around Nicke like a vice. And he screams, into Nicke’s face, the same wordless, shapeless scream Nicke is yelling too, and they’re jumping, and Alex looks like Nicke feels, eyes wide open –

The Cup is so light.

The lightest thing he’s ever lifted, and this is it, they’ve done it, this is it. Like Alex had promised him, so many years ago. He had kept the promise.

Alex stays by his side.

Thank god he does, Nicke would not believe into this reality otherwise, but Alex is here, by his side. Alex is here and cracked wide open with joy and the world’s always been his, but of all the world, Alex chose _him_. 

*

_Gävle is just a stretch of city, and by the time Nicky has gotten a bicycle for his birthday, he truly realizes how tiny it is. That fact never leaves him, after that, staying with him. Growing._

_Turning into an empty clang, close to his heart: it is not enough, that place thunks, in the beat of his heart. He doesn’t quite understand what that ‘it’ is, but it feels like hunger, except no food can fill it._

_Like he could have the skies over Gävle in his palm, and the rivers, forests, fields, too, and it wouldn’t make him happy down to the core. It just isn’t enough._

_As he grows, so does this empty pocket. As if the folded-up Swedish landscapes won’t ever be enough, nor the ice there, nor any ice, no hockey can fill it quite to the rim, no success can make it overflow, no medal can keep it at bay. Nothing he does can dissipate it, nowhere he goes can he escape it. He took it from Gävle, and it grew with him, from there._

_Then he meets Alex._

**Author's Note:**

> There probably will be another part, from Nicke's view...and dealing with the Cup, because let's be real, the best parts of a fic are beginning and end.


End file.
